A Russian conundrum: Yes to both history and modernity; no to Hollywood and geckos

A British eye on what was happening in Russia last week: A Russian warrior finally returns home, space reptiles suffer an unexplained end and Moscow's traffic jams come under the cosh.

Space the final frontier…. if you're a gecko

No word on
whether the five geckos that died while aboard a Russian Photon-M research
satellite will be afforded a full state funeral on Red Square.

Experts at
the Russian Institute's Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medical and
Biological Problems had been hoping to gather valuable information in an
experiment on weightlessness and sexual behaviour among the small reptiles,
four male and one female.

But the
tiny creatures were all dead after the satellite research station returned to
earth near Orenburg after 42 days in orbit.

Launched
from the Kazakhstan's Baikonur cosmodrome July 19, the mission was dogged with
failures, including an early loss of contact with the cold-blooded critters.

Control
was re-established but the subsequent failure of an on-board video monitor has
left scientists baffled as to the cause of death.

"It's
hard to say why they died," said Vladimir Sychev, supervisor of the mission's
biological experiments. "They could have been influenced by zero gravity
or something else. The geckos stayed alive in a ground experiment with the same
parameters."

Starvation
has been ruled out – the lizards' tail weight suggested they were alive up
until a couple of days before the rocket returned.

Fruit
flies, kept at a safe distance from any hungry reptiles, survived the flight
and information from the three breeding cycles they completed while in orbit
will be of great value, the research team says.

Congestion charge mooted for Moscow

Too late
to ease the transit of experimental space reptiles around the Russian capital,
but for more ordinary Moscow motorists plans to introduce congestion charging
could ease the frequent nightmares of gridlock traffic jams.

Options
for charging for the use of the city's MKAD outer ring road and the inner
'third ring' are being drawn up by city transport bosses.

It's an
idea that is long overdue in a city that has only just begun to introduce paid
on-street parking in the centre.

While some
might grumble that Moscow is losing its essential anarchic freedom to drive
(and park) wherever one wishes, the arguments for congestion charging are
economically and politically sound.

Robert
Skidelsky, a British economist and member of the House of Lords of Russian
origin, spelled out the logic as long ago as 2004.

"One
of the first Russian words I learnt was 'probka', or traffic jam," he
wrote on his blog. "It must take longer to get round Moscow by car than
any other city…Yet there is a perfectly simple solution. It is called 'road
pricing.'

When road
pricing was introduced in London in 2003, traffic volume fell by a third and
traveling time was cut by 10%. Motorists started using buses and taxis rather
than pay £5 (now £11.50) a day.

Lord
Skidelsky added: "There are many objections, the most frivolous is that it
will not work in Russia. This is part of the boring argument that nothing that
works anywhere else will work in Russia, because Russians are different."

Award winning Russian Director says 'nyet' to the Oscars

Filmmaker
Andrei Konchalovsky is no stranger to Hollywood. The
director and producer spent many years in Tinseltown and once lived with
actress Shirley MacLaine.

But now he
seems to have tired of American cultural domination. In an open letter to the
Russian Oscar Committee, he demanded the withdrawal of his latest film from
nomination for best foreign language film in the annual Academy Awards.

Konchalovsky
said he did not want "The Postman's White Nights" – which won him
the best director's Silver Lion at the recent Venice Film Festival – to
compete for the prestige award.

"Over
the last few years, I have sharply criticized the 'Hollywoodization' of the
Russian market and bad influence of commercial American cinema on the formation
of tastes and preferences of our viewers," he wrote.

The
internment of the remains of soldier, who died from wounds received at a battle
near Nogent-sur-Seine in 1814, after Russian forces hounded Napoleon's army
back to Paris, closes a 200 year old chapter in Russian history.

"It
seems to me to be symbolic that we are burying the remains of an unknown
Russian solider who liberated Europe in this particular place," Medinsky
said.

The
remains of the soldier were returned thanks to the efforts of a group of
teachers in the French town of Provins who discovered the man had died in a
nearby military hospital.